President says plan is 'the biggest most important step we've ever taken to combat climate change' WASHINGTON (CNN) —The Obama administration will unveil a major climate change plan Monday aimed at a large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the nation's coal-burning power plants, a senior administration official told CNN. The "Clean Power Plan" is the final version of regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency, which President Barack Obama called "the biggest most important step we've ever taken to combat climate change," in a video released by the White House on social media Saturday night. The plan will call for...

Part of President Obama's new plan is to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent by 2030. President Barack Obama will Monday unveil what he called the “biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken” to fight climate change, a sensitive issue central to his legacy. The White House will release the final version of America’s Clean Power Plan, a set of environmental rules and regulations that will home in on the pollution from the nation’s power plants, setting limits on power-plant carbon emissions. Laying out how climate change was a threat to the health, well being and security...

I guess Barry didn’t have time to read my post yesterday about Global-Climate-Warming-Change being a hoax. Tomorrow he’s planning to go ahead and lower the boom on coal plants (just like he promised) with yet another historic stroke of his pen: The EPA will require a 32% reduction in the emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels—a move the Obama administration describes as a “historic action” to combat climate change but one critics are likely to argue is both costly and untenable.President Barack Obama will announce the regulations, the cornerstone of his environmental agenda, at a White House event Monday, where...

NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama will impose even steeper cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants than previously expected, senior administration officials said Sunday, in what the president called the most significant step the U.S. has ever taken to fight global warming..... Obama, in a video posted to Facebook, said the limits were backed up by decades of data and facts showing that without tough action, the world will face more extreme weather and escalating health problems like asthma."Climate change is not a problem for another generation," Obama said. "Not anymore."In his initial proposal, Obama had...

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz had some harsh words for EPA Chief Administrator Gina McCarthy during a hearing Wednesday regarding the agency’s handling of an employee who repeatedly sexually harassed interns. For the past couple of years, Republican lawmakers have been investigating reports of misconduct at the EPA from employees watching porn everyday while on the job to an agency employee who sexually harassed interns and was not reported to the authorities and continued to work at the agency for years. “This is a predator who was fed a steady diet of interns,” Chaffetz told McCarthy during the hearing. “The...

The EPA may be making some major changes to its carbon dioxide emissions regulatory scheme, the details of which have been leaked to the media just days ahead of its expected release date. The EPA will be getting rid of its energy efficiency building block of its Clean Power Plan over legal concerns the agency was overstepping its bounds by controlling how efficiently people used their electricity, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Journal also reported the Clean Power Plan will encourage nuclear power production. An EPA spokeswoman would not confirm the reported changes to the rule as it has...

Craig community leaders hosted a meeting Thursday at Moffat County High School to provide a brief update on the situation at Colowyo Coal Mine, answer questions and facilitate public comment on the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s environmental assessment. Ray Beck, Craig mayor, opened the gathering by telling the audience about the economic significance of Colowyo mine’s 220 jobs to Craig and Northwest Colorado. “This is not the time to slow down,” Beck said, emphasizing the importance of community feedback on the development of the mine’s new environmental assessment. When the OMSRE’s recommendation to approve mining plans for...

Fed up with stalling and failure to follow orders he issued regarding the disclosure of status reports and recovered emails of Lois Lerner, US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan yesterday threatened to hold the IRS Commissioner and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court. Ordinarily, this would mean jail for the officials. Judicial Watch reports:

EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said there is no need to continue debating the science behind climate change. “I can remember a day when the weather report was in the middle of the domestic and international news and took about a minute and a half. It wasn’t the news. When you go on the news today the first thing you’ll hear about is the weather. So there is a dramatic difference in the way people perceive the ability of the climate to impact their lives because they’re feeling it today,” McCarthy said during an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor....

It’s not just producers and farmers who are getting hit with rising costs and growing shortages of water. When it comes to H2O, everyone better get prepared to pay more and get less. In its long history, water has never been more precious, more controversial, more expensive or more essential to agriculture and commerce than it is right now. A symbol of purity in cosmetic ads, a stand-in for quality in beer ads, the poster boy for violence and destruction during floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, water is currently so scarce out West that it threatens to decimate the nation’s most...

It’s the same party with 2 wings. The Washington Crony Party. If one can fleece the taxpayer it will be done, Republican, Democrat, whatever, so long as money is funneled to the narrow interests which fund your campaigns. The Republican Party, though it has a free market wing which is young and growing is still dominated by the older big government crony Republicans. How long that generation can hold on, and how much damage they will create to the economy is anyone’s guess. (From The Surge) "Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) just can’t help himself. He is intent on using the...

Oil and gas producers in one of the most active drilling areas in the country have had to make concessions to not disturb species such as the lesser prairie chicken and the dunes sagebrush lizard. Now industry officials in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico may have four other species to contend with: make way for the Cascade Caverns salamander, the Arizona toad, the alligator snapping turtle and the Rio Grande cooter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday it is giving what it calls “status reviews” to the four amphibians and reptiles found in the Southwest as...

Though a relatively small organization with only 26 people on staff, WildEarth Guardians’ litigious nature has established the environmental advocacy group as a dominant voice in the national debate about environmental policy. From 2010 to present, Guardians have initiated a total of 152 cases in federal district courts and 55 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a total of 207 cases. In 2010 alone they filed 61 claims — an average of about one per week. However, Guardians’ pervasiveness in the courts has not gone without criticism. In a 2012 analysis of WildEarth Guardians' legal activity, the conservative group...

The Marquette County Road Commission announced that it has filed a lawsuit formally challenging a decision by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to block construction of a county road (CR 595) that would shorten the route between a new minerals mine and a processing facility. The suit was filed July 10 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan. “The EPA, in its objection to the construction of County Road 595, has once again overstepped its bounds and demonstrated its politically motivated agenda,” said Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba. “The agency, without reason or merit, has hamstrung...

From the outset, President Obama directed his powerful government agencies and congressional allies to help him “fundamentally transform” the United States. Too many of them were eager to nationalize the nation’s healthcare system, ignore or rewrite inconvenient laws, control the internet and political speech, implement new regulations that imposed enormous costs for few or illusory benefits, and shut down oil, gas and coal in favor of expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized wind, solar and biofuel energy.We voters and citizens were supposed to “tip our hats to the new Constitution” and “take a bow for the new revolution,” as The Who put...

Today we filed our complaint in the Federal District Court of Minnesota challenging the Corps and EPA’s extreme rule redefining “waters of the United States” subject to federal control under the Clean Water Act, and other laws. The case is entitled Washington Cattlemen’s Association, et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, et al,. ... We represent ranchers, farmers and private parties from 5 different states arguing the new rule violates the Clean Water Act itself, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and exceeds federal power under the Constitution. The new rule covers virtually all waters in the U.S. and much...

<p>DENVER — A spokesperson for the radical Santa Fe-based anti-coal group WildEarth Guardians showed no regard and no respect for the families and communities in Colorado who have everything to lose if the Colowyo mine is shut down.</p>

A lawsuit brought by environmentalists and federal regulators has forced a major utility to phase out coal use at six power plants in Iowa. Activists claim these retirements bring the total number of U.S. coal plants shut down to 200 — or 40 percent of the U.S. coal plant fleet. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department of Justice announced an Iowa subsidiary of Alliant Energy agreed to pay $7.1 million in civil penalties to environmental projects for violating the Clean Air Act. The settlement also requires the company to stop burning coal or shut down six power...

Canadian forest fires, which delivered unto us a Fourth of July weekend pall, seem to have inspired the release of a new report from the Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. We are being told that air pollution is killing about 2,000 people a year, a figure so preposterously guessed at it that they might as well have made it 175,000 people a year if it's alarm they are trying to sound. The following words were used: likely, estimates and roughly. Air pollution likely contributes to thousands of deaths each year, a state study estimates. The...

Two notorious crooks are helping us wrap up another sordid episode in the saga of the United States biofuel mandates, while further highlighting how bungled and long past its expiration date the program is. Congress concocted the mandates over fears that US gasoline demand would rise forever and keep the United States dependent on foreign oil, as America’s supposedly limited reserves were depleted. The mandates currently require that we blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol with gasoline every year, and produce over a billion gallons of biodiesel. They hammer us consumers every time we fill our tanks. Turning corn into...

To say that conservatives haven’t had much to cheer about at the Supreme Court lately is an understatement. Much has been said -- and rightly so -- denouncing the judicial acrobatics required to save Obamacare and strike down state bans on same-sex marriage. So I wanted to take a moment to spotlight a case where the Court got it right: Michigan v. EPA. As the saying goes, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. And in ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency improperly ignored costs when it decided to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants,...

The community of Craig is holding its collective breath today, waiting on the feds to decide by midnight whether they will bother to challenge a court decision that threatens to shutter the Colowyo Mine. The Interior Department has gobbled up the entire period allotted to them to decide whether to appeal. We can only hope they have used this time wisely to decide in favor of the 200 plus workers whose jobs are on the line. And the lines in the proverbial sands have been clearly drawn. On one side is the radical environmental group WildEarth Guardians, who brought the...

As President Obama prepares to complete sweeping regulations aimed at tackling climate change, at least five Republican governors, including two presidential hopefuls, say they may refuse to carry out the rules in their states. The resistance threatens to ignite a fierce clash between federal and state authorities, miring the climate rules in red tape for years. The fight could also undermine Mr. Obama’s efforts to urge other nations to enact similar plans this year as part of a major United Nations climate change accord. Republican strategists say that rejection of Mr. Obama’s climate policy at the state level could emerge...

A prominent left-wing group helped formulate Environmental Protection Agency talking points designed to sell a controversial regulatory scheme to skeptical journalists, internal emails show. The emails show Joseph Goffman, the senior counsel of EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, circulating talking points from Center for American Progress climate strategy director Daniel Weiss among EPA colleagues attempting to sell the agency's controversial power plant regulations to a New York Times reporter. Weiss emailed Goffman in September 2013 with a series of suggestions for convincing the Times' Matt Wald of the commercial viability of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, a vital...

Attorneys general from thirteen states filed a lawsuit Monday challenging EPA's new rule defining the waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), asserting that the rule expands the scope of clean water regulations to lands that are dry much of the year and increases the federal government's authority over land use. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, who joined in the lawsuit, noted that 35 states have filed comments in opposition to the rule and several other attorneys general are considering filing challenges. The EPA is overstepping...

A resolution in the Michigan Senate sounds the alarm that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could soon be meddling with how outdoor barbecue-loving Americans prepare their food. Senate Concurrent Resolution 14 expresses opposition to EPA efforts to acquire a study that could lead to regulations on outdoor grills and barbecues. The EPA has commissioned a study intended, "To perform research and develop preventative technology that will reduce fine particulate emissions (PM2.5) from residential barbecues. This technology is intended to reduce air pollution as well as health hazards in Southern California, with potential for global application." Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair,...

Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’ On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, resident Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid. The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective...

The American tradition of celebrating Independence Day with fireworks and barbeques may be living on borrowed time. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on new regulations that could put a serious dent in the festivities. Strict new standards for ozone could bar most fireworks displays and some backyard BBQs. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy derided the idea that traditional modes of celebrating July 4th merited any special consideration. "Clean air is too important to play second-fiddle to abuses that result in needless pollution," McCarthy contended. "Given our modern technology there are surely more environmentally-friendly ways of celebrating this annual event." The...

Editor’s note: This column was co-authored by Roger Bezdek. The Obama Environmental Protection Agency and environmental activists frequently claim that climate change will disproportionately affect poor and minority communities. In their view, this justifies unprecedented environmental regulations, like EPA's pending “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fueled power plants 30% by 2030. But what effect will the regulation itself have on poor and minority communities? The plan will result in higher electricity costs for businesses and families, lost jobs, lower incomes, higher poverty rates, reduced living standards, and diminished health...

Enjoy Independence Day while you still can. If President Obama gets his way, this could be the last Fourth of July worth celebrating. New ground-level ozone standards being pushed by Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency would result in widespread bans on fireworks shows, backyard grilling and other Independence Day traditions. Because the proposed ozone rule is set so low, things as harmless as a few backyard chefs grilling burgers in the same area at the same time, or even festive fireworks being launched during an Independence Day celebration, could cause an area to violate federal ozone standard thresholds. Such...

Indiana will not comply with President Barack Obama's plan to battle climate change by requiring reductions in emissions from coal-fired power plants, Republican Gov. Mike Pence said Wednesday. The proposal as currently written, known as the Clean Power Plan, will make Indiana electricity more expensive and less reliable and hurt economic growth in Indiana and across the nation, Pence wrote in a letter to Obama. The plan targets pollution from the coal-fired power plants that Indiana relies on. Pence said the Indiana coal industry employs more than 26,000 people. "If your administration proceeds to finalize the Clean Power Plan, and...

Bright spots in the Obama economy are few and far between, as opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs are often quashed by a federal government that has grown too large, powerful and pervasive. That’s why it’s telling that the president is scheduled to be in La Crosse, Wis., this week for an event focusing on the economy. To be sure, Wisconsin’s economy has enjoyed a dramatic recovery over the last few years. But our fortunes have improved in spite of – not because of – the president’s big-government policies. Reforming our bloated federal government is essential to revitalizing our nation’s...

Supporters of the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are rightly thrilled by the 6-3 decision reaffirming the subsidies essential to the functioning of the statute. The decision likely cements the statute in place as part of the U.S. healthcare system. However, the way that Chief Justice John Roberts reached that decision may provide the seeds for judicial curbing of regulation in other areas, and could very easily come up in future court cases regarding Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on climate change. Some background is necessary. A 1984 Supreme Court case, Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense...

The Supreme Court overturned the Obama administration’s landmark air quality rule on Monday, ruling the Environmental Protection Agency did not properly consider the costs of the regulation. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices ruled that the EPA should have taken into account the costs to utilities and others in the power sector before even deciding whether to set limits for the toxic air pollutants it regulated in 2011. The case, Michigan v. EPA, centers on the EPA’s first limits on mercury, arsenic and acid gases emitted by coal-fired power plants, known as mercury and air toxics (MATS). Opponents, including the...

Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi sued the Obama administration Monday to stop a new regulation asserting federal authority over minor waterways like streams and wetlands. The rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of the most controversial regulations from the Obama administration, redefining how the EPA enforces the water pollution protections of the Clean Water Act. In the lawsuit, filed in a Houston-based federal court, the states argue that the rule “is an unconstitutional and impermissible expansion of federal power over the states and their citizens and property owners.” The states’ attorneys general — all Republican — said the...

A divided Supreme Court on Monday dealt a significant blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, invalidating a rule that would limit the release of mercury and other pollutants from power plants. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not appropriately consider the costs to utility companies when handing down the rule under the Clean Air Act. "We hold that EPA interpreted unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court's majority opinion. Scalia was joined by the four conservative justices in his...

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules for power plants Monday, in a blow to President Obama's environmental agenda. The EPA rules in question regulate hazardous air pollutants and mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants, known as the MATS regulations. The regulations went into effect April 16. The utility industry argues that the rules cost them billions of dollars to comply and that EPA ignored the cost issue in putting the regulations into effect. Many of the companies have either made the investments or closed power plants to comply. If the investments necessary to upgrade...

FULL TITLE: Black Chamber of Commerce: EPA Clean Air Plan Will Increase Black Poverty 23%, Strip 7,000,000 Black Jobs (CNSNews.com) - A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035. The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035. The...

In what IRS officials are calling a one-in-a-million fluke, the precise emails subpoenaed by Congress in its investigation of IRS discrimination against the President’s political opponents were exactly the ones inadvertently erased by IRS employees. Lost are over 400 back-up tapes containing 24,000 emails to and from Lois Lerner—the IRS employee believed to have orchestrated the discriminatory treatment. Commissioner John Koskinen speculated that “our rather lengthy chain-of-command provided multiple opportunities for miscommunication somewhere along the line. It is not inconceivable that an instruction to ‘not erase’ may have been forwarded as ‘erase.’ The rest is, as we say, history. Nothing...

With the Obama administration only two months away from releasing its “Clean Power Plan,” much debate has focused on the supposed benefits of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years. Lost amid the rhetoric is the economic hardship it will impose on working families — especially the 2.2 million blacks and Hispanics living in Pennsylvania. That's the finding from a new study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce. This regulation will leave minority communities with disproportionately fewer jobs, lower incomes and higher poverty than whites. Thus, while the administration calls its regulation a “justice issue”...

NCBA will engage EPA in lawsuit alleging overreach in Waters of the U.S. rule, group says. Concerns of cattlemen regarding the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers Waters of the U.S. rule released last month are coming true, National Cattlemen's Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall said Tuesday, but that's actually generating more support for repeal efforts. We just got some more feedback this last weekend that it's the determination of the EPA that any stock tank or pond that runs around in a flooding type event would be considered a 'water of the United States,'"...

A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035. The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035. The EPA proposed the Clean Power Plan on June 2, 2014 to cut carbon emissions from power plants. ... There was a...

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told an audience Tuesday gathered at a White House conference “normal people,” not “climate deniers” will win the debate on global warming.rWhat do you think? McCarthy’s remarks came as she was talking about the reasons why the EPA put out a report on the negative health impacts global warming will have on public health. She said the agency puts out such reports to educate the public, not answer critiques from global warming skeptics.rWhat do you think?

The EPA is concerned that the average shower, which lasts just eight minutes, uses 18 gallons of water, and has asked Americans to reduce their shower length by at lest one minute The EPA wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (1) The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to ‘modify their behavior.’ The EPA is concerned that the average shower,...

A global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions would prevent nearly 70,000 premature American deaths annually by the end of the century while sparing the country hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic losses, according to a major government study on the cost of climate change. The report, a five-year, peer-reviewed analysis that assesses the benefits of alternative strategies for dealing with climate change, concludes that every region of the country could be spared severe economic disruptions that would result if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to soar. “The results are quite startling and very clear,” said EPA administrator Gina...

An injunction issued against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by federal judge Leigh Martin May could spell the beginning of the end for Administrative Law Courts and with them, 80 years of unconstitutional abuse of power by the Executive branch. Administrative Law “…allows for the creation of public regulatory agencies and contains all of the statutes, judicial decisions, and regulations that govern them.” These regulatory bodies include the EPA and the SEC. Many came into being during the reign of Franklin Roosevelt, the one president more arrogant and power hungry than Barack Obama. The law itself “…is created by...

We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence, researchers have declared. Researchers say a new study shows 'without any significant doubt' that we are entering the sixth great mass extinction on earth. The study says that the window for conserving threatened species is rapidly closing. The study shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,' said Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment who led the research.The new study, published in the journal Science Advances,...

When Wisconsin’s new state treasurer Matt Adamczyk took office in January, his first act was to order a highly symbolic change in stationery. Adamczyk, a Republican and one of three members of the board that oversees a small public lands agency, “felt passionately” that Tia Nelson, the agency’s executive secretary, should be struck from the letterhead. As soon became clear, his principal objection to Nelson, daughter of former Wisconsin governor and environmentalist-hero Gaylord Nelson, was that in 2007–08 she had co-chaired a state task force on climate change at the then-governor’s request. Adamczyk insisted that climate change is not germane...